Teens dating less due to too much smartphone time: study

Teenagers are going on fewer romantic dates than their parents' generation because they spend too much time on their phones, a major study has found.
According to a new book by Jean Twenge, professor at San Diego State University in the US, those born between 1995 and 2012 - dubbed the i-Generation - are less interested in romance than their millennial predecessors.
Teenagers from this group have grown up with social media and smartphones and spend far more time socialising with one another online than they do in person.
The decline in dating corresponds to dwindling sexual activity among this cohort, researchers found.

Based on surveys of 11 million young people and a series of in-depth interviews, Twenge found that teenagers in their final year of school are going out less often than 13-year- olds did as recently as 2009.
She noted that 56 per cent of 14 to 18-year-olds went out on dates in 2015 whereas for Generation X and Baby Boomers, it was around 85 per cent, 'The Telegraph' reported.

The survey also found that sexual activity among 14 and 15-year-olds has dropped by almost 40 per cent since 1991.
"Teens are spending an enormous amount of time, primarily on their smartphones and communicating with their friends electronically," Twenge told BBC Radio Four's Today programme.

"They are spending less time interacting with their friends in person, hanging out with their friends," she said.